Page 27 of Dark Time

Maybe he doesn’t trust you.

The only thing that would cause that would be the fact that I hadn’t been forthright about my family. I argued with my traitorous brain and reminded myself that we’d got past that. He knew why I hadn’t told him when we first met, and he understood why I’d kept it to myself after.

Then what could it be, I wondered. Dylan wasn’t the kind to share his worries with just anyone, but he often shared concerns with me. It wasn’t something he had a problem doing normally. I knew him well enough to not be worried about affairs. The man wanted me too much and spent too much time inside me for someone having an affair. I didn’t think it was that, or the hotel, or even his past or his adoptive parents.

I went through long lists in my mind, trying to figure out what it was. He was healthy, or appeared to be, and he wasn’t upset. He was just … troubled. I wondered if it was money worries. People could often hide money problems, especially those who had inherited a lot of wealth. Dylan hadn’t exactly inherited his wealth, yet, but he was in charge of that inheritance.

Maybe he’d squandered it on the new resort? That didn’t make any sense either, I decided. He had a lot of resorts spread throughout the country. They weren’t having problems, and he wasn’t the kind to blow a lot of money on a pipe dream. I knew he’d considered possibilities, planned, added the numbers, and done his research before he bought the new place. That couldn’t be the problem either.

Something in his past then? Maybe something he’d done…

I went still for a moment, and then I got up out of the bed. I needed something hot and comforting to drink. I must be insane to wonder if he’d committed some crime, something that had come back to haunt him.

As I waited for the electric kettle to boil so I could make hot chocolate, I revisited the thought. He could have done … something. What?

He wasn’t cruel, not like that. He was a dom, he loved that role, and enjoyed giving pain … but that was in the pursuit of pleasure, ultimately, for the sub and the dom both. I couldn’t imagine he’d ever take it too far. He was too controlled, too observant to ever go further than he should and hurt someone.

I went to the living room and sat on the couch with my hot chocolate a few minutes later. Nothing I thought of made sense. For a second, I thought about trying to go through his emails or phone messages, but that was an invasion of privacy too far. I’d rather just point blank ask him what was wrong before doing that.

I didn’t want to force him into revealing things to me, though. Dylan would tell me, eventually. I just had to be patient. I set the cup on the coffee table and pulled a white fleece blanket over myself. It was silly to let this bother me so much.

My head had started to hurt, and the distraction was enough to make me close my eyes. The slightest bit of light made the pain worse, and the television had a red light at the base that seemed to pierce even my eyelids. There was a blue light on another device, green on yet another. So many lights.

I turned over on the couch to block the lights from my eyes. I’d go back to bed, but I had a feeling I’d be tossing around for a while longer. I didn’t want to wake Dylan up, so I stayed there on the couch. It was one of the thousands of ways I showed that I loved the man, because I knew I did now.

Which was why this secret was bothering me so much. I’d realized just how much I loved him at Christmas. I felt silly, stodgy, always logical, always alone Emily was in love with the man t had made her his sub. It sounded stupid when I thought about it like that, but it was true.

It wasn’t pity over his past, either; although that did make me ache for him when I thought about him as a child. Such a terrible beginning he’d had, but he’d overcome it, and his strength was one of the things that I loved.

It wasn’t something I planned on revealing, not to him or anyone. I just carried it around with me. My love was my treasured little secret. He’d hinted at a future together, and we were about to move in together. He was even letting me make decisions about the new place. That did not equal love or something more.

I knew that, but at the same time, I knew this was all new for Dylan. The man obviously felt something for me, or else I wouldn’t be here now. I was something new for him, something he wanted to hold on to. It could be simple infatuation, or it could be love, but I doubted he’d ever risk his heart enough to tell me.

His birth mother had destroyed his capacity to trust implicitly, but I thought I had about as much as he could give one person. I knew for a fact that I was the only woman he’d ever allowed to live with him. He was adopted by the James couple, he’d had no choice about whether he lived with a woman then, but when he’d become an adult, he hadn’t allowed it. He hadn’t allowed himself that human connection until I came along.

Maybe, in time, he’d allow himself to feel the things we were all supposed to feel, that we were allowed to feel, but for now, Dylan remained closed off.

This whole situation now was because he wouldn’t allow himself to connect with me in that way. I didn’t know if he saw it as a weakness, the need to connect, or if it just hadn’t occurred to him that I would accept him, whatever the problems that came along.

My head started to throb the more I thought about it. I turned my head long enough to read the time on the clock on the wall. It was three am, and I was supposed to get up at seven with Dylan.

I fell asleep for a little while, but my stomach was so upset it had woken me up. I moaned a little, and tried to sit up. What was wrong with me?

I stumbled off of the couch and made my way to the bathroom. We had some pain relievers in there, and I took two with a sip of water from the sink. I decided a hot shower might help the pain in my head and crawled in. The part that should have told me that this was more than just a normal headache was the fact that I did all of this with the lights off. It hurt too much to turn the lights on.

I stood there, unmoving, while the water poured down over my head. The pain didn’t decrease, but it did become more bearable. I stood there for ages, until the water started to go cold, and then I got out. After I wrapped my hair and body in towels, I made my way back to the couch and pulled the blanket over me.

My stomach rebelled the minute I put my head down, and I sat right back up. That helped the nausea, so I crammed myself into the end of the couch, and soon I’d fallen asleep again. Though it must not have been for long, my hair was still wet. The towel had come loose from my hair, and I used that as an extra pillow, too miserable to even call out to Dylan.

I doubted I’d be going anywhere when he got up, except back to bed. The nausea became unbearable. I tried to drink some more water, and that made my stomach completely rebel. I was violently sick and probably made some rather pitiful noises, but I couldn’t help it.

The violent actions of my muscles only made my head hurt worse, and I began to cry because I was in so much pain. What the hell was wrong with me?

I wanted to call out for Dylan, to tell him something was wrong, but it hurt too much. The nausea seemed to finally pass, at least the vomiting did, and I moved to the tile wall. I slid down to the floor and used a towel as a cushion, but the cool wall against my temple felt good.

I fell asleep again, this time for a much longer period. My hair was dry when I woke up, the nausea was back with a vengeance. I thought it was impossible to be so sick. I hadn’t eaten enough that day to throw up so very much. This time, I knew I made a lot of noise. I was exhausted, in pain, and unable to control myself. I just wanted to sleep and forget what was happening, but I was too sick.

It felt as if the vomiting went on for hours, and the sound of the flush when I felt like I was done made the pain in my head scream a whole lot louder.